Inspired by another ongoing Catholic church thread, in which John Mace equated the Catholic Church to a private club that can be as discriminatory as it wants toward its members. I don’t think that’s a particularly good analogy, particularly in the US where religions are given particular constitutional protections that are not afforded to private clubs.
In addition, the Catholic church is (or perhaps operates is a better term) a sovereign nation that is recognized by most other nations and the United Nations.
The church also claims that the various dioceses around the world are somehow independent institutions. Many people outside the church claim that this is a legal fiction to limit the liability of the church as a whole in cases where some form of misconduct is discovered within any particular diocese. Some argue that a more accurate model for the church would be a multinational corporation.
But I wonder if multinational corporations become what they are because becoming a sovereign nation is not an option for them. One of the things you hear about multinationals is that they are so powerful because they can’t be reined in by any one state, but if the state and the corporation are one and the same? It would seem to be the best of both worlds, at least for the folks within it.
And there lies the rub. The RCC is so many things to so many different actors, that they are beyond any control but their own, and IMO they haven’t been exercising that real well of late. Obviously YMMV.
So, what would be the implications of treating the RCC as a nation, and its priests as ambassadors? What would be the implications of considering the RCC as one whole large organization rather than hundreds of separate ones?
The sovereign nation bit is a polite fiction. They are not a real member of the UN, and citizenship is purely by choice. Anyone who stops being a citizen is automatically given Italian citizenship.
One can argue about whether they should be tax exempt, and I would argue that they shouldn’t be. But when it comes down to it, no one is forced to join the Church, and anyone can leave whenever he wants. You can be kicked out if you don’t follow the rules, but there is no legal punishment for not following the rules (unless those rules are also part of the legal code of the country the person lives in).
Sure, it’s an influential private club, but so is the Federalist Society.
In short it is a religion that operates like a private club. It wasn’t always so, as the Church had legal authority in centuries past, and there are religions that operate that way now (Islam in some countries). But the RCC is long past that phase.
In point of fact, diocese have been treated as independent institutions within the church and according to church law for the entire history of the church. That they currently file as independent corporations according to the laws of the countries in which they are located is simply a recognition in civil law of the reality expressed in church law.
It is fun for some outside the church to picture the sinister hand of the Vatican pulling the strings to make all the various bishops dance while pretending no strings exist, but that is not reality. Any serious reading of history–right up to and including the present regarding the various implementations of the Documents of the Second Vatican Council or the current pedophilia scandal–will demonstrate that the bishops have always tended to go their own ways.
Do most bishops take their diocese in ways that the Vatican wants them to? Sure. Bishops are not chosen for their propensity for independence. Does the Vatican have any way to discipline a rogue bishop? Yes, although it is a cumbersome process intended to prevent bishops from being yanked around by Vatican officials.
This is not a claim that the system has not failed, particularly in the case of pedophile priests inthe U.S., where the U.S. Council of Bishops issued guidelines both in 1989 and 1993 to rectify problems–guidelines that were too frequently ignored in various diocese. But the failures of those guidelines are a direct result of 1900+ years of diocesan independence.
I want the more recent charges of Vatican collusion in ignoring the priestly scandal examined and I want the church to take specific actions to publicize the results, to atone for those actions, and to prevent further coverups. However, the specific claim that the independendce of diocese is a fiction or ploy is simply false.
If I belong to a country club, there are certain rules I have to follow on the golf course. If I start cussing at the group ahead of me, piss on the 18th green when I have a bad round, they kick me out. I broke the rules. Same thing with the Church. The Church is following its own rules-- you commit an excommunicable offense, and you get excommunicated. You want to not be excommunicate? Repent, and quit committing that offense. You know what the rules are, and if you’re not willing to abide by them, then you’re not a member of the Church. Start your own Church, or find one that better aligns with your views. People do that all the time.
My problem with the analogy is not with the method. I agree with you on the points you have made, here. My problem is in it there is substantial difference as to the seriousness of the result. As i’ve said, there seems to me to be a big difference between not being allowed to play golf at that club and putting your soul at risk. I don’t even believe in souls, and it seems like an important difference to me.
And that people do that all the time is true, but that’s because there are a huge amount of people. It’s not a matter of choice of faith, otherwise there would be no reason to change; it’s a matter of the focus or method of faith changing, not you.
A serious offense merits a serious reaction from the Church. You cannot partake in communion if you are living in a state of (serious) sin. No club is obligated to keep members who violate the basic laws or tenets of the club. The Church is not damning the soul of the excommunicant. The Church is pointing out that the excommicant’s own behavior is damning his soul.
If someone leaves the Church, it’s most likely that person no longer accepts the Church’s authority. If the person does accept that authority but still leaves the Church, then he is choosing a life of sin rather a life of righteousness. No one forces him to make that choice either way.
My argument is not that the behaviour of the excommunicant is unworthy of the result. But, simply, that excommunication is a bigger deal that simply being kicked out of a private club.
Now, if I were to make that argument, I would most certainly agree with some things the Church excommunicates for, and disagree with others. That is also affected by the severity of the result; if you show me a private club that disallows people based on some measure I find silly, then I likely won’t be as bothered about it than if you showed me an example of an excommunication rule that I find silly. I am not obligated to share the Church’s opinion.
Not so. Such things are a matter of degree. And there’s the other way round too, where a person who stays in the Church might well no longer accept the Church’s authority entirely.
Leaving, or staying with, the Church is a choice. Faith is not a choice. And faith strongly affects whether you stay or go.
Yeah, it’s a bigger deal, but so what? It’s absolutely trivial to avoid-- if you are a believer. Repent, and be forgiven. If you want to continue the behavior, then you don’t accept the Church’s authority. You have taken yourself out of the Church, by choice. No club allow individuals to write their own rules, and still stay in the club when those rules conflict with the club’s own.
Terrorize children with hell until they are brainwashed enough to internalize the concept then they are controlled by their brainwashing for life.
But the word Hell isn’t in the Bible. The Old Testament says SHEOL and the New Testament has HADES. If Hades means Hell then why don’t we all know the Greek word for Heaven. In Greek mythology everybody went to Hades so Hades and Hell do not mean the same thing.
Nope. No meaningful use of the term “terror” refers to non-violent acts. Certainly the Church could be called a Terrorist Organization in the past, but not now. When they bring back the rack and the inquisition, call them a Terrorist Organization all you want.
I think there are a couple of misunderstandings here which need to be cleared up.
First, from a Catholic perspective, being excommunicated does not cause someone to cease to be a member of the church. Excommunication is a canonical penalty which subjects someone to various disciplinary measures, most notably exclusion from participation in the sacraments, except in very limited circumstances. But an excommunicated Catholic is not excluded from the church and does not cease to be a Catholic; he simply becomes a Catholic who is under the penalty of excommunication.
Secondly, from a Catholic perspective being excommunicated has no implications whatsoever for someone’s eternal salvation. None at all.
(The actions which led to the excommunication may have implications, of course. But whatever implications they have are independent of whether excommunication follows or not.)
The Roman Catholic Church is not a terrorist organization. If you want to have any credibility on this board, you should retract and then apologize to the board’s Catholics for making this untrue claim.
Are you implying that the Catholic Church does this? If so, then you’ve just demonstrated your own ignorance. You should probably retract and apologize for that one as well.
When one translates a book from one language to another, on generally replaces words from the original language with words from the new language. I’m not sure what you’re hoping to accomplish by pointing out that the translators of the Bible did exactly what all translators do. If you’re implying that the New Testament in the original Greek didn’t contain any notion of Hell as the Catholic Church teaches it, then you’re demonstrating your ignorance yet again.
The roman Catholic Church is a church; hence the name. Trying to treat it as a secular institution would be as inane as treating Harvard University like a swimming pool or the Microsoft Corporation as a food bank.
Catholics also often act as though the Church is akin to a racial or ethnic group subject to the protections of political correctness. So any criticism of the RCC’s leadership or political agenda is treated as though it were a form of prejudice.
There are clearly occasions when legitimate criticism has been leveled at the RCC.
It is also true that there is a long history of Catholics and Protestants hurling brickbats at each other, with a very strong anti-Catholic propaganda movement running through American history. Noting that the RCC has been subjected to prejudice is not the same as claiming that it should be a protected class. It is probably true that some Catholics, having been subjected to various anti-Catholic slurs over the years, tend to see all criticism as more of the same, but that is human nature, even when they are mistaken as to the motive of any current criticism.
And Hades sucked big time no matter who you were. When Odysseus goes to Hades in the Odyssey he meets up with Achilles who tells him that he would rather be the slave of the poorest farmer than to be dead. The afterlife wasn’t a particularly pleasant place in Greek mythology even for a hero like Achilles. Sure seems hellish to me.
Couldn’t help laughing, saw a news item about the Vatican making it an incredibly serious offence (Can’t remember the exact terminology) alongside paedophilia to ordain female Bishops?Priests?
And it will be punished accordingly.
So any day now I expect to see a veritable horde of women ordained worldwide by the R.C.C.
Except that the Church is a group of people, tied together by a common cause, and who meet regularly. They do things as a group, and they identify with each other. They function like a club. Your analogies don’t make sense. The Federalist Society is also a club. But oh noooo!!! It’s a “society”, hence the name.
Anti-Catholicism has an old history in the USA–beginning before the Colonies won their independence. Maryland was founded as a refuge for English Catholics & passed a Toleration Act that granted more religious freedom than found in the other colonies. (Except for those hippies in Rhode Island.) But it didn’t last long; Charles Carroll of Carrollton was the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence. Later, anti-Catholicism was part of the Nativist/Know-Nothing anti-immigrant doctrine. Right thinking WASPs were appalled by the Famine Irish (more “foreign” than the mostly Presbyterian Irish who had preceded them) & such swarthy types as the Italians.
This isn’t all ancient history. As a young Texas Catholic Democrat, I remember this episode personally (from Wikipedia):
I’ve been Agnostic/Atheist longer than I’ve had any religion & I do not excuse the evil acts of certain Catholic clergy–including the ones doing the cover up. But anti-Catholic prejudice is still alive & well in the USA. It is also behind the more civilized facade of groups like FAIR.